


Learning Curve

by MyMisguidedFairytale



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alternate Universe - Royalty, Canon-Inspired AU, F/M, Gift Fic, One Shot, Romance, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:39:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyMisguidedFairytale/pseuds/MyMisguidedFairytale
Summary: Everyone has an idea of who they want him to be and how they want him to rule. He would learn for himself what it meant to be King, and what it was that he wanted in his life. He was in no hurry. That day, he had done more for that goal than in any days prior. / Meryem x Komugi, AU: runaway royalty and confused commoner





	Learning Curve

**Author's Note:**

> Learning Curve was originally written and published on April 27, 2014 on [tumblr](http://mymisguidedfairytale.tumblr.com/post/83978297780/fanfiction-hunter-x-hunter-learning-curve).
> 
> Everything below is preserved as it was originally posted:
> 
> **Title** : Learning Curve  
>  **Pairing** : Meryem x Komugi  
>  **Word Count** : 2,424  
>  **For** : soshi185  
>  **A/N** : For the drabble meme, prompt: “runaway royalty and confused commoner AU” with Meryem/Komugi. This is an all human AU, with a vague fantasy setting inspired by East Gorteau and the Chimera Ant society.

_**Learning Curve** _

The kingdom of Chimera looked much different up close than it did from the small windows crafted of colored glass from the palace where Meryem lived. His mother, the Queen Regent, and his trio of bodyguards insisted on keeping him contained to only a few rooms in one wing of the Palace for his education and training, and he rarely got to interact with the people he was one day to rule. It was only on the kingdom’s major holidays that he even got to see the populace, and even then only from the large terrace overlooking the Palace’s gardens, where the gathering was mandated by law and enforced by the military.

So it was with some trepidation and mild irritation that Meryem found himself completely and utterly lost some two hours after his escape. The streets were narrow and angled and dirty, and Meryem saw that reflected in its people, shoeless and scrawny, with sunken, downturned faces. It made him reluctant to ask for assistance, and while he could conceivably demand anything from the people around him, it would also be like shining a beacon at the guards likely already sent out to recover him. And as he looked into the faces of the people he passed in the street, his own covered by a rough woolen scarf, Meryem wondered what these people could even give him, if he asked. From his estimation, any money or food they could give would be taken from their own mouths. If they gave him directions, and were discovered to have aided him in his escape, they would be punished and in his absence he would be unable to circumvent their fate. No, he would live on his own, for as long as he could—and not here, he decided. This district was one of the oldest and poorest, and he wanted to be in one of the commercial districts, where the area was denser and people wouldn’t look twice at a stranger. A place where—

And his shoulder bumped into a woman walking past him. She stumbled and fell, striking the ground with a high-pitched wail.

Meryem froze, his every intention of quietly but quickly sneaking away dissolving when the woman, her hands scrabbling over the ground, accidentally grasped hold of his ankle.

“Watch yourself,” Meryem said, and reached down with one hand, grabbing the woman by the arm and hauling her upright. She sniffled again, the sound just as high-pitched as her earlier wailing but thankfully not as loud, and reached out uncertainly with both arms. Meryem’s eyes widened when he realized the woman was blind, and had been reaching for her cane.

His grip softened, and he reached down and picked up the dropped cane with his other hand, guiding it into her own. He paused. Kings did not apologize. The lesson had been drilled into his brain for so long that he found himself at a loss for what to say and just continued staring at her.

Her sniffling grew louder and she reached out with one hand, grasping his arm with her tiny fingers. “Thank you, sir!” Her cane tapped against the ground. “I-if it’s not too much trouble, could you point me back in the direction of the central registration office? I think I got turned around when I fell…”

“I’m not sure where that is,” he admitted finally. “But you were walking in this direction originally.” He guided her forward, and then made to step aside, but she kept a hold on his left arm.

“Thank you! You’re very kind.” He was sure no one had ever called him kind in his life, and if any of his guards heard that they would label it an insult, and not a compliment. “But how do you not know that place? Everyone has to go there to file their taxes, and to submit work and housing records, and—”

Her voice was completely at odds with her face and body, shrouded under the colorless smooth fabrics the populace seemed to favor. She was short, and her hunched back and white hair made her appear old, but her face was unlined and her voice so thin and high that it made pinpointing her age difficult. The woman coughed once, and her nose made an unpleasant snuffling noise as she tried to breathe. She took a step forward, leaning heavily on the cane, and a tiny worry in the back of Meryem’s mind took notice that she probably injured herself when she fell.

“—You foolish woman,” he interrupted her. “If you are injured, you should rest.”

“I cannot rest here!” Her voice turned insistent. “My family lives just down the street. Once I am home, I can—”

“Then do not let me keep you.” He made to release her again, but his continued interruptions seemed not to affect her in the slightest. She seemed to be used to such things.

“What kind of person doesn’t know about the registration office? You’re not from around here, are you? Where are you from? What’s your name?” Her voice was getting louder, if such a thing was possible, and she let out another whimper as Meryem stiffly disentangled their arms and stepped around her.

“Hey, wait!” As she called to him, a few heads looked up in their direction. Meryem scowled beneath his scarf and began to walk faster. The tapping sound of the woman’s cane echoed his footsteps.

“H-hey!” The tapping stopped, and the sound of her labored breathing replaced it.

Meryem turned back towards her. She was leaning against the peeling stucco wall of a tall building with high-set, barred windows, and her legs were shaking. The hand not gripping the cane was fisted in the material of her dress, and there were a few beads of sweat on her face just from the exertion of shouting and running those few steps.

Once he reached her side, Meryem grasped her arm under the elbow and steered her back onto the road, in the direction she mentioned her family lived. She went along with him easily enough, using the cane and leaning on him to hide whatever injury she had sustained when she fell.

“You are completely useless, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice completely without inflection.

The woman exhaled sharply out of her nose. Meryem winced. “I try not to be! I know I can’t do much, but—”

“Stop babbling.” On second thought, maybe her chatter was better than her wheezing. “You should always speak with purpose.”

“I try to do that!” The cane tapped along with each of their footsteps, and after a few minutes she stopped in front of a series of narrow stone steps leading up to the second floor of a nondescript concrete building. “This is my home! I may not have much, but—”

“No.” She had been about to offer him food or shelter, and while he was currently lacking in both those things he had no desire to endure more of this woman’s presence to obtain them. “Just…tend to your leg. And be more careful in the future.”

“I-I will!” She ascended the steps with practiced ease, and Meryem turned and continued down the street, towards the center of the district. As the streets became wider and more populated, Meryem hid himself in an alley and began to study the people his mother told him he had been born to rule.

He saw children in rags pick the pockets of men twice his age, and guards on patrol who kicked a man covered in sores to the ground. A drunk stumbled out of a tavern and fell against the steps beside Meryem, asleep and snoring within minutes. Women and men passed them all by, barely offering a glance to the suffering and discordance of the kingdom Meryem realized he barely knew at all. And he was sickened by what he saw.

“I will do better than this,” he said to himself, quietly. “In time, when I am King, I will make it so these things never happen again. No one will be able to stop me.”

He noticed a second group of guards, passing his hiding spot, and realized that they were not a regular patrol at all. They were searching for something. For him.

Meryem turned into the darkness of the alley and fled deeper into the network of crisscrossing streets and alleys, journeying back to the few areas he felt familiar with in his fleeting escape. He walked, almost without purpose, trying to put some distance between himself and the guards. Were they searching for his location at random, or had they actually managed to track him to this part of the city? He knew one of his guards, Nefelpitou, would be able to find him without much difficulty unless he hid himself well. And he had nowhere to go—no friends, no allies, no connections to speak of. Except for the blind woman.

And so it was that Meryem found himself standing beside the house she had said was hers. He could hear a familiar tapping noise coming from the second-story window; another guard patrol walked down the street away from him, and when they were out of sight Meryem began to climb the wall.

He grasped the window ledge and pulled himself up and over it, landing on the wooden floor with only the barest of sound. Across the room, the woman sat on a cushion before a low table, sipping a drink. She straightened immediately and turned towards the window.

"Eh? It’s you? The stranger from earlier?”

“I’m not a stranger,” Meryem said, affronted. There were game pieces spread out on the table before her, and he walked over and sat himself beside the table. “What is this?”

“I don’t know your name, so you’re still a stranger to me,” she said. “Will you tell it to me?”

“You want…to know my name?” He looked down at his empty hands and wondered why such a simple request should strike such a deep chord within him. “It’s Meryem.”

“I’m Komugi!”

“I didn’t ask you for your name.” Meryem sighed as Komugi stuttered apologies in-between her noisy breathing. “I asked you what these are,” he continued, picking up a painted wooden disk and studying it.

“It’s gungi.” She sounded proud of it. “It’s a board game. You win by putting the commander”—and she tapped one of the pieces close to one edge of the board—“in checkmate. Do you play games?”

“I had no time for games. But I learned several activities like you describe as lessons in strategy.”

Komugi’s puzzled silence stretched on for a few moments. Finally, she spoke. “You are not like anyone I’ve ever met.”

“I would think so. There is no one else like me.”

“What do you mean by that?” Komugi reached out with her free hand, across the game board, to the piece that Meryem had studied and then discarded. She returned it to its place. “Just who are you, Meryem?”

“I am the future King of this land and all others—”

The drink in Komugi’s hands clattered to the ground. A second later Komugi followed it, bowing her head until it touched the wooden floor. Whatever she had been drinking spread out in a circle from the cup’s rim, staining the edges of her sleeves.

“F-forgive me, Your Majesty!” More apologies and the rest of his titles spilled from her lips. “I did not know! I would never have treated you with such unconcern—”

“It is nothing.” The words still left a sour taste in his mouth. Everything he had done and seen that day, and every word that had passed between them contradicted everything he had been taught in his years of lessons on political governance, war strategy, and world history. “So there is nothing to forgive. Rise. Do not cower before me.”

Every ordinary person he had ever met cowered before him—the palace staff, his tutors, the people who bowed before him at the kingdom’s many parades and festivals. He did not know why it seemed so important to him that she did not. And the others did not even defer to him out of respect, only fear.

Komugi lifted her head, and the snuffling of her breathing ceased, as if she was preparing to speak but hesitating over her words.

“You are probably wondering what I am doing here,” Meryem said, and Komugi breathed out in concurrence. “And I do not know.”

A King should not be uncertain. That had been one of his first lessons. And he discarded it so openly now. “I do not know what it is that I want,” he continued.

“Everyone has an idea of who they want me to be and how they want me to rule.” He thought of his mother, who called him ‘the light that shines on everything,’ and of his guard Shaiapouf, who routinely gave speeches about how, as King, Meryem would be superior to all other creatures and should have no attachments to things as base as humanity. He would learn for himself what it meant to be King, and what it was that he wanted in his life. He was in no hurry. That day, he had done more for that goal than in any days prior.

Outside, the sound of heavy footsteps against the steps culminated in the thud of fists beating against the wooden door to Komugi’s residence.

“ _His Highness Prince Meryem!_ ” a deep voice called out. “ _We have information that you are inside this building! We have orders to escort you back to the Palace!_ ”

The door rattled as it was hit again, then the thin lock shattered and the door fell against the opposite wall as a half-dozen soldiers entered the room. The shock caused a few of the game pieces to roll off the table.

“Your highness.” Upon sighting him, they all bowed in unison, but they never relinquished their grip on the weapons sheathed at their hips. “Please accompany us.”

Meryem stood, and it was then that the leader of the soldiers noticed Komugi.

“And who is this?” he said. “An accomplice? A kidnapper? We will be bringing this woman in for questioning. Prince Meryem, if you would step aside.”

Komugi reached for her cane and stood; Meryem moved to stand in front of her, shielding her from the soldiers with his body.

“This woman is not your concern. I will return to the Palace as you ask. I have much to do.” Then, disregarding the soldiers entirely, he turned towards Komugi.

“I can go with them,” Komugi’s voice was quiet. “I do not mind.”

“You will not go with them,” Meryem said. “You are coming back with me.”

**End.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I would appreciate and value your comments.


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